Chapter 26
A week and a half. That was exactly how much time I had been given to prepare for the eyes of the world to fall on me.
I stood in the Hokage’s office, the heavy fabric of my dark blue bodysuit fitting snugly beneath my Chunin vest. My pouches were packed to their absolute limits with kunai, explosive tags, wire, and a small sealing scroll filled with plenty of the Restoration Pills that Tsunade had insisted I carry. I adjusted the strap on my leg, feeling a mix of nervousness and determination settling in my gut.
The past week and a half had been incredibly productive, primarily because of a new unexpected reward.
After that intense meeting where I had found out about my new bounty and agreed to join the Senju clan, I retreated to my apartment and found two new notifications waiting for me.
[Achievement Unlocked: S-Rank Bounty][Rank: MID]
[Hidden Spring Iron Body] [Cradle V1] (Refinement)This Iron body allows the user to maintain large amounts of water. So-called because they can go a long time without drinking water, so the idea is that they have a "hidden spring" inside their bodies and they never have to drink at all.
I had figured the reward for an S-Rank bounty would be higher, but the System likely kept it at Mid-Rank because I wasn't widely considered an S-Rank threat yet—just a kid with an inflated price tag on his head. It was slightly underwhelming, but I couldn't deny it would come in handy if I was ever stranded behind enemy lines or caught in an extended siege.
The second roll, however, changed quite a lot.
[Achievement Unlocked: Join The Senju Clan][Rank: MID]
[Model Student] [Tsukihime] (Talent)If you find yourself regularly skipping class to go on nighttime hunts for vampires or just general adventure, then it pays to be a good student on paper if nothing else. You're a model student, soaking up what teachers say like a dry sponge and speed reading your required studies in but an hour. You learn about twice as quickly as other top students, absorbing academic and mundane skills with very little trouble, even on a time crunch. Supernatural teachings or things like complicated science take more time, but you’re still an excellent learner as long as you have a good teacher - whether an actual mentor or a very informative book.
I remembered the sheer elation I felt reading that description. The truth was, I was not a natural prodigy. I wasn't a generational genius like Minato, Kakashi, or the future Itachi. Everything I had accomplished was built on the back of my perks and brutal, relentless effort.
This perk bridged that gap, increasing my overall learning capabilities. It made absorbing the dense, complex theory behind advanced jutsu vastly easier. I had originally possessed no intentions of developing my Wind Style further during the short time I had left, but with my accelerated learning speed, I managed to pick up a few highly useful tricks. My Wood Style training from the scrolls left behind by the First Hokage had benefited immensely as well.
The very next day, I officially moved into the Senju Compound. To keep myself from burning out, I took an hour or so every afternoon to relax by teaching the few remaining children of the clan some basic Taijutsu. I turned out to be a surprisingly excellent teacher. While my monstrous fighting instincts came from [Martial Arts Prodigy], the perk also granted me unparalleled analytical prowess. I could pinpoint at what point their stance was failing or their weight distribution was off, correcting their mistakes with accurately. It had been a peaceful, grounding way to wind down.
Now, all that preparation was about to be put to the test.
I was alone in the room with Hiruzen. He was reviewing a scroll on his desk, the silence stretching comfortably between us.
The door opened, and Minato Namikaze stepped inside. He wore his standard Jonin uniform, looking entirely too relaxed.
"Hokage-sama. Yuuki-kun," Minato greeted, offering us both a warm, easy smile.
"Ah, Minato. Right on time," Hiruzen said, rolling up the scroll and setting it aside. His expression turned grave, the grandfatherly demeanor vanishing instantly. "Let us get straight to the briefing."
I squared my shoulders, giving the Hokage my full attention.
"Intelligence reports indicate that Kumogakure forces have begun an aggressive advance through the Land of Hot Water," Hiruzen explained. "They have secured the northern border bridging their territory, but the central region of the country remains unoccupied. They are attempting to fortify that central zone to create a staging ground before pushing an army to our borders."
Hiruzen leaned forward, clasping his hands together on the desk. "We are sending a specialized strike team to halt their advance and force them back. You will be facing their vanguard. According to our spies, the Kumo force is being led by the sons of the Third Raikage. A, and his brother, B."
My breath hitched slightly. The future Fourth Raikage and the perfect Jinchuriki of the Eight-Tails.
"B is their Jinchuriki," Hiruzen continued, his gaze shifting directly to me. "Your presence is a calculated countermeasure, Yuuki. However, your primary objective is strictly to force a retreat. You are not to kill either of the commanders, even if the opportunity presents itself."
"Because of their relation to the Third Raikage," Minato noted, his voice serious.
"Precisely," Hiruzen confirmed. "Killing the Raikage's sons would escalate this conflict from a territorial dispute into a blood feud. We want to secure our borders, not invite the full, unrestrained wrath of the Hidden Cloud down upon us. If the intelligence is wrong and you find yourselves facing an overwhelming army rather than a vanguard, retreat is authorized. Survival takes priority."
Minato nodded in understanding. He turned to look at me, his blue eyes calm and steady. "Are you ready?"
I felt a sharp pang of envy at how outwardly composed the man looked. He was about to face two of the most dangerous shinobi alive, and he looked like he was heading out to pick up groceries. I took a deep breath, forcing my racing heart to slow, and exhaled the tension from my lungs. I had spent every waking hour of the last ten days preparing for this exact moment.
"I am," I said, my voice coming out just as calm.
"Good," Hiruzen said. "You will be traveling with a team of elite specialists. Report to the main gates in twenty minutes to rendezvous with them. Dismissed."
Twenty minutes later, I stood near the massive wooden gates of Konoha.
I looked at the assembled shinobi waiting for us, and I completely understood why Hiruzen was confident in this mission. The village was sending its absolute best.
I recognized almost all of them immediately. They were the current generation of clan heads, the parents of the kids I knew from the series.
Shikaku Nara stood with his hands in his pockets, looking far more tired than I'd seen any other person be. Beside him were Inoichi Yamanaka and Choza Akimichi, completing the Ino-Shika-Cho formation. A few paces away, Tsume Inuzuka was stretching her arms, a massive, feral-looking ninken sitting faithfully by her side. Shibi Aburame stood perfectly still, his high collar and dark glasses hiding his face, a faint buzzing sound emanating from his coat. Finally, standing with perfect, rigid posture was Hizashi Hyuga, the cursed seal of the branch family hidden beneath his forehead protector.
These were the heavy hitters.
Minato stepped forward to address the group. "Thank you all for gathering so quickly. Time is of the essence. I placed several formula markers throughout the Land of Hot Water during a scouting mission shortly after the war began. We will be using the Flying Thunder God Jutsu to bypass the travel time and intercept the Kumo vanguard directly since the information arrived rather late."
A few of the Jonin nodded, clearly familiar with the drill. I, however, felt a spark of genuine curiosity. Teleportation. Space-time ninjutsu was the pinnacle of shinobi arts. I wondered what it would actually feel like to be pulled across the continent in the blink of an eye.
"Gather around," Minato instructed, holding out his hands. "Make sure you are in physical contact with me or someone touching me."
I grabbed onto Choza's massive shoulder, bracing myself. Minato closed his eyes.
A flash of blinding yellow light swallowed my vision.
Fucking awful. That was exactly how it felt.
My boots hit solid, damp earth, but my stomach felt like it had been left hovering somewhere fifty miles behind us. The world spun violently. I dropped to one knee, clutching my stomach, fighting a sudden, overwhelming urge to empty my breakfast onto the roots of the nearby trees.
I took a few deep, ragged breaths, forcing the nausea down. I looked up. Minato was standing a few feet away, perfectly balanced, his kunai already drawn and his eyes scanning the surrounding forest.
How did he stay so composed doing this in the middle of a high-speed battle?
"That is... incredibly unpleasant," I groaned, pushing myself back up to my feet.
Minato glanced over his shoulder, scratching his cheek with a sheepish, apologetic smile. He let out a light chuckle. "Sorry about that. The spatial displacement can be a bit jarring for passengers. I am still working on making the transition smoother for others."
"Don't take your time," Shikaku muttered from nearby, looking slightly green around the edges himself.
We moved out immediately, leaving the teleportation marker behind. The environment in the Land of Hot Water was drastically different from the dense woods of Fire Country. The air was thick and humid, carrying the faint, sulfuric scent of the natural hot springs scattered across the region.
We traveled through the canopy for about ten miles. The pace was fast, but the Jonin around me moved with complete silence. I relied on my enhanced stamina from the On Foot perk to keep up without burning unnecessary chakra.
Minato signaled a halt as we reached a high ridge overlooking a wide, forested valley.
Hizashi stepped to the edge of the branch. He brought two fingers together in a single seal. "Byakugan."
The veins around his temples and eyes bulged sharply, pressing against his skin. I watched him closely. It was the first time I had seen a Dojutsu activated in person. It looked rather jarring, but the advantage of seeing miles away was undeniable.
"The vanguard is approaching from the northeast," Hizashi reported, his pale, pupil-less eyes scanning the horizon. "Based on their current speed, they will reach this valley in thirty minutes."
"Good," Minato said, crouching down on the branch. "Keep observing the surroundings, Hizashi. Let me know if their formation shifts."
With half an hour to prepare, the squad settled into a state of relaxed readiness. These were seasoned veterans, and their composure was infectious.
Choza leaned against a trunk, pulling a small ration bar from his pouch. Shikaku simply closed his eyes, his mind undoubtedly running through a hundred different tactical scenarios.
Tsume Inuzuka looked over at me. Her massive ninken, Kuromaru, let out a low huff, sniffing the air in my direction.
"So you are the kid that Iwa is fussing over, eh?" Tsume said. Her voice was rough, and she wore a sharp, feral grin. "Thirty million ryo on your head at your age. Do not let it go to your ego, brat."
I adjusted my vest. "I'm just trying to stay alive, ma'am. The bounty is more of a nuisance than anything." I said, trying to come off as confident, but I cringed internally, my social circle was rather thin and my social skills had certainly deteriorated as she commented that I shouldn't call her ma'am.
Inoichi Yamanaka offered a calm, reassuring smile. "You handled yourself well during the Kyuubi incident from what we read. A Kumo vanguard will be tough, but you are not fighting alone today."
I nodded in acknowledgement, right these people were filled in on that. My Synergy perk would ensure I meshed perfectly with their tactics without getting in their way.
Minato gathered our attention a few minutes later to finalize the strategy.
"We know A and Killer B will be leading the charge," Minato said, his tone turning entirely professional. "The rest of their force will consist of highly trained Kumo elites. If we let the commanders operate freely alongside their troops, they will break our defensive line."
"We need to isolate the heads from the body," Shikaku agreed, opening his eyes. "The rest of us can stall and dismantle the vanguard, but A and B require specific countermeasures."
"I will handle A," Minato stated. It was not a boast, just simple reality. "My speed and space-time ninjutsu are the only reliable counters to his Lightning Release Chakra Mode."
He turned his blue eyes directly to me. "Yuuki. You will handle the Eight-Tails Jinchuriki."
The heavy hitters of Konoha all looked at me. There was no hesitation or doubt in their eyes, only professional expectation.
"I will handle him," I said, giving a firm nod. Thankfully I knew my task from the Hokage Tower, if that was thrown at me just now, I'd be a fair bit more rattled.
Still internally, my mind was racing through the Bingo Book Entry and my own memories. Killer B. I knew exactly who he was and what he was capable of. I remembered watching him fight the Akatsuki, throwing hands and smacking Sasuke and his entire team years down the line. He was an absolute monster in combat.
But that was well over a decade in the future.
Right now, he was younger. He likely lacked the sheer combat experience he would have later, and he might not have even developed his Acrobat fighting style yet. His synchronization with the Eight-Tails might be strong, but he was not at his absolute peak. I could do this. My Nature Release was the ultimate counter to a Jinchuriki, and with my Attribute Distribution, Jutsu repertoire upgrades, Martial Arts Prodigy perk and the transformations, I could match him in a straight fight.
"Inoichi, set up the mind link," Shikaku ordered, taking control of the squad's coordination. "Shibi, deploy your insects to blanket the flanks. We funnel the vanguard into the center of the valley and cut them off from their commanders."
"It will be done," Shibi replied, his voice a low, steady drone. A dark cloud of insects began to pour from his sleeves, dispersing silently into the forest below.
The plan was set. All we had to do now was wait for the storm to arrive.
We didn't have to wait long.
Inoichi’s voice echoed directly into my mind, a smooth, calm presence cutting through my own thoughts. 'They are five hundred meters out. Dropping into the ravine now. Engage on Minato's mark.'
I breathed out, exhaling the tension as I let my body relax. We dropped from the high canopy as one synchronized unit, landing solidly in the center of a wide clearing.
The Kumogakure vanguard stopped dead in their tracks.
There were about twenty of them, elite Jonin and Chunin by the look of their uniform and stance. But my eyes were immediately drawn to the two massive figures leading the pack. A, towering and built like a brick wall, his blonde hair spiked wildly. Beside him stood Killer B, wearing his signature dark sunglasses and carrying two long swords strapped to his back.
Minato stood in the center of our formation, his posture completely relaxed. I took my place just a half-step behind his right shoulder. Shikaku and the others fanned out into the tree line, their presence a silent, looming threat.
"We recommend that you turn back," Minato said, his voice perfectly neutral, carrying easily across the clearing.
The Kumo shinobi bristled. A few of the Chunin in the front row took an involuntary step back, their eyes wide beneath their headbands.
"Sir," one of the Kumo Chunin muttered nervously, leaning toward A. "That's the Yellow Flash. We’ve got to get out of here!"
A didn't flinch. His dark eyes locked onto Minato with the intensity of a predator sighting a rival. "I don't think we will. I've heard you are fast."
"I've heard you are quite fast yourself," Minato replied, his polite smile never wavering.
Killer B stepped forward, striking a dramatic pose and pointing a finger at us. "Yellow hair, don't care, you think you rule? With my brother and me, you are done, you fool! Yeah!"
I let out a slow breath. I was not going to stand here and let Minato farm all the aura from this encounter.
"Yo!" I called out, stepping forward to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our golden-haired commander. I gave the Kumo forces a lazy wave. "Good for us that we brought backup, eh?"
The reaction was instantaneous. The nervous Kumo Chunin's eyes darted from Minato to me, his face draining of whatever color it had left.
"That's... that's the Wood Release kid!" he hissed, his voice cracking.
A's gaze snapped to me, his eyes narrowing. Lightning began to crackle erratically across his skin.
I didn't give them any more time to chat. The plan was to separate the brothers, and I was going to execute it. I slammed my hands onto the rocky soil.
Massive, thick wooden roots erupted from the earth like sleeping dragons. They tore through the ground directly toward Killer B, churning up rocks and dust to cut him off from the rest of his squad.
A roared, his body instantly enveloped in a blinding aura of blue electricity. The Lightning Release Chakra Mode. He launched himself at me, a localized thunderbolt aiming to take my head off before my roots could even reach his brother.
He never made it.
A sharp clatter of metal rang out. Minato had vanished and reappeared in the exact center of A's path, his special trishula kunai locked against the Raikage-to-be's sparking forearm guard.
With A intercepted, I focused on B. The Jinchuriki didn't even draw his swords. He just grinned. A thick, dark purple octopus tentacle erupted from his lower back in a burst of bubbling red chakra. It lashed out like a massive whip, smashing into the leading root. The wood shattered into splinters, raining down around him. I hadn't pumped them full of dense chakra to reinforce them. I just needed them large and chaotic enough to herd him.
'I’m taking him deeper into the forest as per the plan,' I broadcasted through Inoichi's mind link.
I cut the flow of chakra to the roots and focused entirely inward.
Swift.
The world lost its sharp edges, blurring into a soft-focused canvas. The heavy weight of my normal state vanished, replaced by an explosive, frictionless energy. I kicked off the ground, leaving a small crater behind, and shot straight toward Killer B.
I reached him just as his tentacle retracted. He saw me coming, his reflexes easily keeping up with my speed. He didn't reach for his swords. He dropped his center of gravity, shifting his weight into a bizarre, rhythmic stance that left his guard wide open but his core tightly coiled.
I threw a high-speed jab aimed at his throat. B bobbed his head to the side, completely ignoring standard defensive taijutsu, and threw his entire upper body into a spinning clothesline attack aimed right at my chest.
It was utterly unconventional, wrestling mixed with a syncopated dance routine, completely erratic and off-beat. For a split second, the sheer awkwardness of his timing took me entirely off guard.
Then, [Martial Arts Prodigy] kicked in.
Thinking over his flow. The chaotic, off-beat rhythm made perfect sense. I felt the slight pivot of his left heel before he even completed it. I read the shifting tension in his core, feeling how he used his own momentum to generate force without traditional footing.
My instincts adapted in a heartbeat. Instead of retreating from the wide swing, I ducked low, stepping into his rhythm. My mind instinctively ripped apart the mechanics of his spin, integrating it into my own Unified Style. I planted my foot, matching his erratic tempo perfectly, and used the momentum of my duck to drive my shoulder upward into his open armpit.
I grabbed the thick fabric of his vest, used his own spinning momentum against him, and torqued my hips.
B let out a surprised grunt as I lifted him off his feet, spun him in a tight circle, and launched him like a cannonball deep into the dense forest.
He crashed through the canopy, shattering thick branches as he went. But before he could fly too far, another massive purple tentacle burst from his back. It shot out and wrapped tightly around the trunk of a massive oak, bringing his flight to an abrupt, jarring halt. He swung down, landing in a heavy crouch on a thick branch.
I engaged Swift again and bolted after him, leaving the sounds of Minato and A clashing in the clearing behind me.
I caught up to him a few hundred meters deep in the woods. He stood up, adjusting his sunglasses, and pointed at me.
"Kid's got speed, kid's got the flow, but against the Eight-Tails you're moving too slow!" B rapped, tapping his foot against the bark to a beat only he could hear. "Good thing you separated us though. Bro worries too much, ya know? Now watch the master with the killer touch, wee!"
I landed on a branch opposite him, settling into a loose, ready stance. My mind was already categorizing the new weight shifts and grappling counters I had just stolen from him.
"I'll try to keep up," I said, my voice steady.
He grinned, reaching back and finally drawing the two long swords from their sheaths. The real fight was just starting.
B came in fast, both blades singing.
He led with a diagonal slash from the upper right, his left sword trailing a half-beat behind in a rising cut aimed at my hip. The timing was deliberately staggered, if I dodged the first, the second would catch me mid-recovery.
I didn't dodge either. I stepped into the first slash, closing the distance so the blade passed over my shoulder, and caught his left wrist with my forearm before the rising cut could develop. His eyes widened behind those dark glasses.
I shoved him back hard and immediately put ten meters between us.
He landed, twirled both swords in a lazy figure-eight, and laughed. "Quick hands, quick feet, you read the beat, but can you keep it up when I bring the heat?"
Instead of answering, I slammed both palms down.
Six roots erupted from the forest floor in a staggered wave, thick as tree trunks, driving toward him from multiple angles. Two came low, sweeping at his legs. Two more arced high, curving inward like closing jaws. The last two punched straight up from directly beneath him.
B didn't retreat. Three massive purple tentacles burst from his back in a spray of bubbling crimson chakra, each one as thick as my torso. The first tentacle whipped downward and cratered the two roots coming from below, smashing them into pulp against the forest floor. The second caught the low sweepers mid-arc, coiling around them and squeezing until the wood splintered and cracked. The third lashed out horizontally, meeting the two high roots head-on.
The collision shook the canopy. Leaves rained down around us. Wood fragments and chunks of bark scattered across the clearing.
I sent more. He matched them.
For every root I pushed from the earth, a tentacle was there to meet it. I tried threading thinner roots through the gaps between his tentacles' reach, and he adjusted instantly, the appendages moving with a fluid intelligence that told me Gyuki was actively guiding them. The Eight-Tails was acting as a combat partner, covering angles B couldn't see while he held his ground.
I could feel the chakra cost climbing. Sustaining this many constructs at this distance while keeping them fast enough to threaten a Jinchuriki was expensive. And he wasn't even breathing hard.
Neither of us was gaining ground. This wasn't going to work.
B seemed to reach the same conclusion at the same moment. He grinned, retracted his tentacles in one smooth motion, and charged.
He closed thirty meters in under two seconds. Both swords came in simultaneously this time, a scissoring horizontal slash aimed at my neck from both sides.
Swift.
The world softened. His blades, fast as they were, became readable. I dropped straight down, letting both edges whistle through the air above my scalp, and drove my right fist upward toward his exposed sternum.
He twisted his torso at the last instant, turning my punch into a glancing blow across his ribs. Without missing a beat, he reversed the grip on his right sword and stabbed downward at my crouched form.
I rolled left. The blade bit into the branch where my head had been, sinking three inches into the wood. He ripped it free and transitioned into a spinning back kick aimed at my temple, his swords trailing behind him in wide arcs that turned the kick into a blender of edges and blunt force.
[Martial Arts Prodigy] fed me the data before my conscious mind could process it. The kick was a feint. His real weight was loading into his left foot. The moment the spinning kick whiffed, he'd plant and lunge forward with a double thrust.
I didn't wait for the kick to finish. I stepped into his rotation, inside the arc of both blades, and drove my knee into the back of his planted left thigh. His leg buckled for a fraction of a second. I used that fraction to grab a fistful of his vest at the collar and yank him downward while throwing a sharp elbow at the bridge of his nose.
He headbutted my elbow.
The impact jarred my arm from wrist to shoulder. His forehead was dense, did they train their heads to be tough as well? He used the collision to snap his head back and whip his right sword in a tight, vicious arc aimed at my gripping hand.
I released and kicked off his chest, putting five meters between us.
He straightened up, rolling his neck, that infuriating grin still plastered across his face. "You read the blade, you read the fist, but Killer B don't stay on no list! Adapting to my flow, that's cute, that's sweet, but I switch the song, and you'll lose the beat!"
He wasn't wrong. Every time I locked onto his rhythm, he changed it. Not randomly, deliberately. The breakdancing, the wrestling, the swordplay, they weren't separate styles. They were verses in the same song, and he was improvising.
But [Martial Arts Prodigy] didn't just read patterns. It read bodies. And no matter how much B switched his style, his body still obeyed physics. His shoulders telegraphed his hips..His heels dictated his range. The music changed, but the instrument stayed the same.
He came again, leading with a lunging thrust from his right sword. I read the extension of his shoulder and sidestepped right. His left sword came around in a horizontal slash aimed at my midsection — I arched my back, letting the blade cut air an inch from my stomach, and countered with a straight palm strike to his exposed left shoulder.
He rolled with the hit, letting my palm push him into a full spin, and converted the spin into a rising diagonal cut that would have opened me from hip to collarbone. I just barely got out of the way, immediately stepping forward to throw a low kick at his ankle.
He hopped over it, impossibly light on his feet for a man his size, and brought both swords down in a heavy overhead chop. Again, I tilted my body just enough to let it swing by me.
Might.
The shift was instantaneous. My muscles swelled with density. I shoved upward, throwing both his blades wide, and drove a haymaker into his solar plexus before he could recover his guard.
The hit connected clean. B's eyes went wide behind his glasses. He folded slightly over my fist — but even as the air left his lungs, a tentacle shot from his back and slammed into my ribs, launching me sideways through a curtain of leaves and smaller branches.
I caught myself on a thick limb twenty meters away, skidding along the bark.
Swift.
We stared at each other across the gap, both breathing harder now. A bruise was already forming across his sternum where my fist had landed. My ribs throbbed where the tentacle had caught me.
He pointed a sword at me. "Okay, little tree man, I'll give you that, you hit like thunder, I respect where you're at. But the Eight-Tails ain't even warmed up yet, and B's best performance? You ain't seen it, bet!"
Equal. We were roughly equal right now. But "right now" included him fighting at a fraction of his Jinchuriki power. If he decided to escalate to a full Tailed Beast transformation, this stalemate would end violently in his favor.
I needed to tip the scales before that happened.
I inhaled deep and exhaled hard, forming the Bird seal in the same motion.
"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough."
The compressed gale slammed into the forest floor, ripping up loose soil, bark, dead leaves, and the splintered debris from our earlier exchanges. A thick cloud of brown dust erupted upward and outward, swallowing the space between us.
I didn't waste a single second. My hands flew through the seals for the Wood Clone Jutsu. Three figures separated from my body in the span of a heartbeat, peeling away from my torso and sides like reflections stepping free from a mirror. Each one was a perfect copy.
The chakra cost hit me like a punch to the stomach. Each clone carved a brutal chunk from my reserves, far more expensive than a Shadow Clone would have been. Shadow Clones were physical and could take a few hits before dispersing, sure, but Wood Clones were on a different level entirely. These were solid constructs reinforced with my chakra, capable of tanking some actual heavy hits. They could use my jutsu at the same efficiency I could, and they could relay information back to me without needing to dispel.
If I had to guess, Tobirama had likely studied this jutsu of his brother's and replicated a weaker, more accessible version for shinobi who couldn't use Wood Release. The Shadow Clone as a derivative of the Wood Clone. It made too much sense not to be true.
"Spread wide," I relayed through the mental link. "Triangle formation. Keep him boxed. Priority is getting the Buds on him."
The three clones scattered without a word, vanishing into the thinning dust.
The cover was already fading. I could hear B moving through the murk, boots on bark, the faint ring of a blade adjusting in his grip. He was circling, not standing still.
I sent the Cursed Buds forward.
They threaded through the canopy from four different vectors, mine and the clones' each guiding a set. Thin, vine-like tendrils tipped with ugly, bulbous growths lined with rows of small, sharp teeth. They weren't pleasant to look at, and they were even less pleasant to be attached to.
Once a Bud bit into flesh, it anchored deep and began siphoning chakra from the host. The more chakra the host pushed through their system, the harder the teeth clenched and the faster they fed. If B escalated to a partial or even full Tailed Beast transformation, the flood of bijuu chakra would turn the Buds into a limitless fuel line for me, enough to sustain an army of roots and constructs without ever touching my own reserves. And if he held back to starve them out, he'd be fighting at a fraction of his power while the Buds slowly bled him dry regardless. Either way, the moment they latched on, the clock started ticking in my favor.
The dust cleared.
B spotted the first tendril a half second before it reached him. His left blade came down in a clean, precise cut, severing the vine an inch below the bulb. The ugly growth dropped to the bark, teeth still snapping at empty air.
A second Bud came from behind. He spun on his heel, right blade sweeping low, and bisected it without breaking stride.
Two more from the clones' positions, threading in from his flanks. He didn't even look. A tentacle erupted from his lower back and swatted one aside while he sliced the other out of the air with a casual backhand flick of his left sword.
He looked down at the severed Buds twitching on the branch at his feet. He nudged one with his toe, watching the teeth gnash uselessly, and his lip curled.
"Creepy vines with teeth that bite, crawling up on me in the night." He crushed it under his heel and pointed his right sword at me, then at the three clones now fully visible in their positions around him. "Four of you now, that's the plan? Bring a hundred, I don't give a damn!"
B cut through the last Bud with a flick of his wrist and came straight at me.
He was faster now. The first sword came in as a rising diagonal aimed at my left shoulder. I read the angle and stepped outside it, but his second blade was already there, stabbing forward at my midsection in the gap my dodge created. I twisted, letting it graze the fabric of my vest, and threw a counter jab at his jaw.
He leaned back just enough that my knuckles brushed his chin. Then a tentacle whipped around from behind him and caught me across the chest.
I went skidding back across the branch, bark tearing under my heels. Before I could reset, he was on me again, both swords whirling, a tentacle sweeping low at my ankles while a second one arced high to cut off my jump.
I went low instead. Dropped flat, let the high tentacle sail over me, kicked off the branch at an angle to clear the low sweep, and came up inside his guard. I drove my elbow into his ribs. He grunted and brought a knee up into my stomach. We separated again, both sliding back several meters.
He tilted his head, adjusting his glasses.
"You hang in there, I'll give you that, little tree boy's got some combat chat." He rolled his shoulders. "But playtime's over, the kid gloves drop. When B gets serious, the whole world stops."
Bubbling, dark red energy erupted from his skin like something boiling over from the inside. It wrapped around him in a thick, roiling shroud that distorted the air with heat and pressure. Two tails of dense crimson chakra formed behind him, thrashing and whipping independently.
The branch beneath his feet cracked from the pressure alone.
He looked at me through the haze of red, that grin still in place but wider now, sharper. "Your move, wood man."
I stared at the cloaked Jinchuriki standing fifteen meters away and made my decision without hesitation.
I reached for the place inside me where the transformation lived.
The rage came first. It hit like a flood breaking through a dam, a white-hot fury that poured into every corner of my mind. My vision narrowed. My teeth clenched so hard my jaw ached. Every grievance, every fear, every moment of helplessness I'd ever felt in this world surged upward and demanded to be let loose.
I felt my body change. My frame stretched, bones lengthening, muscles thickening and densifying. Two feet of height packed onto me in seconds. My skin flushed a deep, angry red. My fingernails darkened and sharpened into points. My canines lengthened into fangs that pressed against my lower lip.
My chakra quadrupled.
I focused on B through the haze of anger, on the mission, on the objective. Subdue him. Force the retreat. I held onto that with everything I had, and [(Wo)man on Mission] met me halfway, threading some clarity through the inferno. The rage didn't disappear. It was still there, a constant roar at the edges of my thoughts. But I could think through it. That was enough.
B stared at me. For the first time since the fight started, the grin faltered.
"The hell is that?" he said without any rhymes.
"Come find out," I said. My voice came out deeper, rougher. Wrong in a way that made my own skin crawl.
We met in the middle.
His right fist, wreathed in that bubbling crimson shroud, drove straight at my chest. I caught it with both hands. The impact sent a shockwave rippling outward through the canopy. Trees within ten meters shed their leaves in an instant. The branch beneath us split lengthwise with a sound like a thunderclap.
I held my ground. My feet sank into the wood, but I held.
I shoved his fist aside and swung a massive right hook at his temple. He caught it on his forearm. Another shockwave. The cracked branch finally gave out beneath us and we both dropped, still swinging, crashing through the lower canopy in a tangle of fists and chakra.
He threw a cloaked uppercut at my chin. I pulled my head back and countered with a straight kick to his sternum. It connected. He rocketed backward through two tree trunks, reducing them to splinters. A tentacle caught a third trunk and swung him back toward me feet first.
I crossed my arms and took the double kick on my guard. The force drove me back twenty meters, my heels carving deep furrows into the earth as I slid. Before I'd even stopped moving, I sent five thick roots surging from the ground toward him.
Five tentacles met them. Each collision sent tremors through the forest floor. Wood cracked against chakra-dense flesh in a series of concussive booms that echoed across the valley.
We clashed again, up close. He threw a wild haymaker. I ducked it and drove my fist into his gut, folding him slightly. He recovered instantly and headbutted me square in the face. My vision flashed white. I grabbed the front of his vest, pivoted, and hurled him bodily over my hip.
He flew. Thirty meters through the air, smashing through a thick trunk before tumbling across the ground. That was enough distance.
Clone Two was already there.
B was pushing himself up from the crater of his landing when the thin vine snaked around his left forearm. The Bud bit down. Its ugly little teeth sank through the chakra cloak and into the flesh beneath.
B snarled, reaching to rip it off. Clone One sent a volley of roots from the left to force his hand away. Clone Three launched two more Buds from behind. One missed. The second caught his right calf and latched on.
The flow started immediately. Bijuu chakra, raw and corrosive, flooded through the Buds and into the network. It hit my system with a burning, acidic edge that made my coils ache.
But it was nothing. Compared to the full, unfiltered fury of the Nine-Tails that had nearly burned me alive from the inside out, this was a campfire next to a volcano. And even the controlled sessions at the farm, where I'd channeled Kurama's chakra through my body for days straight, had been far more intense than this. My coils had adapted. The corrosion stung, but my pathways processed the foreign chakra without faltering.
My reserves swelled. The constant drain of sustaining three Wood Clones and the many roots I'd sent, then reversed. I was gaining chakra faster than I was spending it.
B felt the drain. I could see it in the way his cloak flickered around his left arm and right leg, the shroud thinning where the Buds had attached. He ripped the one on his forearm free with a snarl, tearing skin with it, but the Bud on his calf was already too deep. He reached for it and Clone One sent another root at his chest, forcing him to block instead.
I slammed my palms to the ground.
The forest responded.
Roots erupted from every direction. Not six, not ten, not fifty. Hundreds. They burst from the soil, from tree trunks, from the exposed root systems of every tree within a hundred meter radius. Thick ones and thin ones, sharp-tipped and blunt, surging toward B in a tide of living wood. And threaded among them, dozens more Cursed Buds, their ugly little mouths gaping wide as they rode the wave of constructs toward the cloaked Jinchuriki.
B fought. He fought like hell. Tentacles lashed in every direction, shattering roots by the dozen. His swords carved through vine after vine. Explosions of bijuu chakra detonated outward, splintering entire waves of wood. But for every root he destroyed, three more took its place. The Buds kept coming, and in the chaos, more found purchase. One on his shoulder. Another on his hip. A third wrapping around his right wrist.
The cloak was flickering badly now, thinning in patches. Every Bud was drinking deep, and the more chakra he poured into his shroud to compensate, the harder they fed.
I stood at the center of the storm of wood and spoke loud enough for him to hear me over the cracking and splintering.
“The more you escalate, the more I do,” I said, a grin on my face. “You did well. I hope I can fight you again.” This was the most exciting fight I’d had since I came here. The way my blood pumped, the several close calls... To think this wasn’t even him at his peak, and neither was I at mine.
B stopped swinging. He stood in the middle of the closing net, five Cursed Buds latched onto various points of his body, dozens of roots hovering around him from every conceivable angle. His cloak guttered and surged unevenly. His breathing was heavy.
He looked at me through the gaps in the roots. I was breathing hard too. The mental strain of holding the transformation while directing hundreds of constructs through three clones was grinding me down from the inside. But I could keep going. The bijuu chakra flowing into me made sure of that.
His grin came back, smaller this time, but real.
"Damn, tree man, I hear what you say. You drain more juice the more I play." He let out a long breath and lowered his swords an inch. "That's a real nasty trick you got, whole thing stings a lot."
I heard it before I saw it.
A sound like the sky ripping open. The crack of superheated air splitting apart at impossible speed, accompanied by a high, electric whine that my [Train the Slayer] hearing picked up a fraction of a second before impact.
I threw myself sideways on pure instinct.
A fist wreathed in blinding blue lightning cut through the space where my head had been. The shockwave alone hit me like a truck, sending me tumbling across the torn earth. I caught myself on a root and looked up.
A stood in the middle of my construct network, his Lightning Release Chakra Mode blazing at full intensity. He wasn't looking at me. He was looking at B, at the Cursed Buds biting into his brother's skin, at the hundreds of roots closing in from every angle.
His expression was pure, cold fury.
He didn't speak. He just moved. His fist drove into the thickest cluster of roots pinning B's left side, and the wood exploded outward in a shower of splinters and bark. He pivoted, drove an elbow through the next formation, ripped a Bud off B's shoulder with his bare hand, and smashed through another wall of constructs with a straight kick that sent fragments scattering across the clearing.
I could feel my network coming apart. Every root he shattered was a thread cut from my control, and the bijuu chakra that had been flowing through the Buds was thinning as he tore them free one by one. I was losing the fuel line. I could reinforce, grow more, flood the area again and bury both of them in wood until neither could move.
A hand touched my shoulder.
I nearly swung on reflex. Minato was beside me, having appeared without a sound. When the hell had he marked me? I'd have appreciated some warning.
"Let them go," Minato whispered, his voice barely audible even to my enhanced hearing. "Weaken the constructs on my signal."
I wanted to argue. Every instinct in me, amplified by the Stage 1 rage still roaring through my blood, screamed to push harder, to bury them both, to finish it. [(Wo)man on Mission] pulled taut, and I forced the anger down. The mission was to force a retreat, not start a blood feud.
I gave a tight nod.
A ripped the last Bud from B's calf. B stumbled free, his chakra cloak guttering, breathing heavy but still standing. A put himself between his brother and me, lightning still crackling across his skin, his dark eyes locked onto mine with a promise of violence.
Then the others arrived.
The Konoha squad landed in the tree line behind us. From the same direction, the remaining Kumo forces appeared as well, likely having paused their battle to see what was happening. The Konoha ninja looked far less injured and tired when compared to the Kumo team.
The battlefield between us told the story better than any words could. Craters pocked the earth like mortar strikes. Hundreds of shattered roots lay strewn across the ground like the bones of some enormous creature, tangled with splintered tree trunks and torn earth. Entire sections of the forest canopy were simply gone, reduced to jagged stumps and hanging debris. Scorch marks from bijuu chakra and explosion craters from the roots' impacts overlapped across every surface.
It looked like two natural disasters had collided.
Minato stepped forward. I stepped up beside him, still in the transformation, looking far more intimidating than I would normally. My hands were shaking from the mental strain, but I kept them at my sides.
Minato's voice carried across the devastated clearing, calm and measured.
"Is this place worth this, A?"
The silence that followed was heavy. A looked at the destruction. He looked at B, still bleeding from where the Buds had been, his cloak flickering weakly. He looked at the assembled Konoha Jonin fanned out behind us, the clan heads of the most powerful families in Fire Country, fresh and ready while his own forces had been fighting for the better part of the engagement.
His jaw tightened. The lightning around him flared once, bright and angry.
"Tch." He turned his back to us. "Let's return."
The Kumo forces moved immediately, grateful for the order. B gave me one last look across the clearing. He didn't grin this time. He just tapped two fingers to his forehead in something between a salute and an acknowledgment, then turned and followed his brother.
They vanished into the trees in a series of rapid Body Flickers, there one moment and gone the next, until the far side of the clearing was empty.
The tension didn't leave my body. The rage was still there, still hammering at the inside of my skull, demanding I chase, demanding I finish what I started.
I let the transformation go.
The release was immediate and total. My frame shrank, the red fading from my skin, the fangs and claws receding. The rage cut off like a switch, and in its place was nothing. Just hollow, bone-deep exhaustion. My vision blurred. My legs buckled.
I didn't feel myself hit the ground.
AN: Yuuki finally makes his proper debut on the wider stage, and this will not be the last time he takes part in a “main” battle. There is a lot more to come.
This chapter leaned heavily into the fight, so I hope it was fun to read. I went into quite a bit of detail, so let me know how it felt. If it worked for you or if it dragged in places, I want to hear it. If you enjoyed the chapter, go ahead and drop a like!
Now, yeah. It has been a while. I will not go into all the reasons, but I was not able to write last month, and I know that is frustrating. That is on me, and I am sorry. This has probably been the longest gap so far.
That said, this is an 8k word chapter.
Thank you to everyone who is still here and supporting me. I genuinely appreciate it. After this, I will be putting out a proper schedule and sticking to it. Having that structure should help me stay consistent without burning out.
Make sure you do comment your thoughts, it really does help!